CHACRDIGEST
JUNE 30th, 2025
#45
FIERY MONTH Flaming June, Sir Frederic Leighton’s 1895 painting (pictured left), is often described as the ‘Mona Lisa of the Southern Hemisphere’, its enduring appeal coming from the beauty of its composition. Sadly, ‘Flaming June’ can also be used to describe the past month. Dramatic events in Ukraine and the most aggressive Iran-Israeli conflict in a generation have taken place in the context of a NATO Summit and the publication of the UK Defence Review. Indicative of an era where policy is announced on social media, the azimuth of events has changed on an hourly basis. As ever, the best insights are based on an understanding of the historical, social and geopolitical context that led to current events. The views expressed in this Digest are not those of the British Army or UK Government. This document cannot be reproduced or used in part or whole without the permission of the CHACR. chacr.org.uk
MIDDLE EAST As primers for the events in Iran and Israel, RUSI’s Understanding the Israel-Iran Conflict and Chatham House’s podcast What does the Iran-Israel war mean for the region and the world? are worth consuming. Equally, Peter Frankopan points out that historians like to think about specific turning points and whilst 7 October was one, what is more significant is that it unlocked a sequence of opportunities for which Israel has been preparing for more than a generation. While commentators were trying to make sense of a rapidly changing situation, the theme of Iranian strategic weakness was the feature of both a Chatham House and Foreign Affairs article. The latter piece outlined how in the past two years Iran’s hard-liners have overplayed their hand whilst Israel had seriously degraded Iran’s proxies Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran’s ally, Assad’s Syrian regime, had fallen. The article concludes: “Ali Khamenei and the IRGC have lost; the regional status quo they established is finished.” However, The Economist highlighted that postponing Iran’s ability to produce a weapon will not eradicate the know-how accumulated over decades and is likely to redouble the regime’s desire to achieve a nuclear weapon. These factors were also raised by a Politico article whilst the Financial Times highlighted that as long as Iran possessed enriched uranium, it could continue its efforts to produce a nuclear bomb. Written prior to the US missile strikes, a Foreign Affairs article suggested the Gulf States are now primary players in President Trump’s push for a new nuclear deal and, rather than the traditional US-Israel closeness, are the “fulcrum of a reconfigured regional order” – something America’s kinetic intervention now calls into question. On the evolving issue of US Intelligence assessments, The Economist’s Inside the spy dossier that led Israel to war concluded that American intelligence agencies were sceptical of Israeli claims that Iran’s nuclear programme was close to delivering a viable device. It concluded that “Mr Trump may decide this is a job for America, whatever his spooks say”. Somewhat upsettingly for President Trump and the social media generation, the one thing that is clear is outlined in the New York magazine Intelligencer article We Won’t Know for Weeks If the U.S. Strikes in Iran Worked.
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